AMERICAblog was created by John Aravosis, a former writer for the Economist with a joint law degree (JD) and masters in foreign service (MSFS) from Georgetown University, and twenty-five years experience working in national politics in Washington, DC. At AMERICAblog, we don’t just link to the news, we give you an insider’s look at what’s important and why.

AMERICAblog launched on April 24, 2004, and quickly became one of the most influential political blogs in the United States, with monthly traffic exceeding 1.5 million page views and 700,00 unique readers (Google Analytics). The AMERICAblog family of sites now includes AMERICAblog Gay (2009) and AMERICAblog Elections (2011), and has been recognized as a “top website” by PC Magazine, a top ten liberal political blog by Personal Democracy Forum, and PeekScore recognized John Aravosis as one of the “top ten liberal bloggers.”

In addition to expert analysis of the day’s news, AMERICAblog has broken a number of high-profile stories, including:

OUR STAFF

JON GREEN – EDITOR

Jon Green recently graduated from Kenyon College with a B.A. in Political Science and High Honors in Political Cognition. While at Kenyon, he re-founded and edited the Kenyon Observer, the school’s student-run political journal. Jon worked as a field organizer for Tom Perriello in 2010 and as a Deputy Regional Field Director for President Obama’s reelection campaign. He writes on a variety of topics, but pays particularly close attention to elections, religion and political cognition. In March of 2015, Jon took over the role of editor in chief from AMERICAblog founder John Aravosis, who no longer works on the blog due to a new job.

JOHN ARAVOSIS – FORMER EDITOR

John Aravosis was a Washington, DC-based writer and political consultant, specializing in using the Internet for politics. Up until recently, he was the editor-in-chief of AMERICAblog, AMERICAblog Gay, and AMERICAblog Elections. He now lives in NYC, working on international affairs.

John has a degree in rhetoric from the University of Illinois (Champaign/Urbana), a diploma from the University of Paris (Sorbonne), and a joint law degree and masters in foreign service from Georgetown University, where he studied under Madeleine Albright.

John’s writing experience includes working as a stringer for both the Economist and RADAR, serving as the US Politics editor at About.com, and having been published in the New Republic and New York Daily News, among others. Washingtonian magazine’s annual “50 Best Journalists” issue named John one of “journalism’s rising stars, those likely to have a major impact in coming years.” John has also been honored as one of the “Out 100,” and by the Advocate as one of the fifty “most powerful gay men and women in America.”

John’s policy experience includes working as a legislative attorney in the United States Senate (specializing on arms control, foreign policy and commerce issues), a consultant at the World Bank, and a children’s right’s advocate at the Children’s Defense Fund. In 1997, John launched his own political Internet consulting firm, with clients ranging from governments (US Department of State, HHS, CDC, the city of Barcelona, the Social Democratic Party of Sweden) to non-profits (ACLU, Planned Parenthood, NEA, AFSCME).

John has also been a frequent TV pundit, and has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, Hardball with Chris Matthews, ABC News, Nightline, CNN’s Reliable Sources, MSNBC and more. John has also been regularly quoted in American and foreign media. John speaks five languages (has worked and done interviews in French, Spanish and Italian), and has visited or worked in 29 countries, including conducting lectures and training about the Internet and politics in France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Greece, Morocco, Indonesia and Cote d’Ivoire.

WRITERS

Naomi Seligman has built her career on transforming start-up advocacy organizations into powerhouses of opinion and social change. She has played a pivotal role in ending the careers of some of the most corrupt members of Congress, exposing front groups and the corporate interests behind them and systematically rooting out misinformation in the media.

Naomi launched and directed the communications operations of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and Media Matters for America. Naomi has taken on the most aggressive conservatives of our time. She was a scourge of the gun lobby, exposing deceptive industry tactics through her undercover work at NRA conventions and gun shows; confronted Bill O’Reilly face-to-face; and was instrumental in persuading MSNBC to drop Frank Luntz as a campaign commentator for the 2004 elections.

Naomi is a commentator on national media, including, CNN, NPR, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Roll Call, The Wall Street Journal, and the AP. Naomi is a partner with the Truman National Security Network and has worked extensively on Capitol Hill. She is President of Seligman Consulting in Santa Monica, CA.

Mark Thoma, MD is a physician who did his residency in internal medicine. Mark has a long history of social activism, and was an early technogeek, and science junkie, after evolving through his nerd phase. Favorite quote: “The most exciting phrase to hear in science… is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it!) but ‘That’s funny.’” – Isaac Asimov

Christian Trejbal is a member of the board of directors of the Association of Opinion Journalists, writes for Opinion in a Pinch and is an open government chairman for the Association of Opinion Journalists. Overcoming graduate degrees in philosophy, he worked as an editorial writer at The (Bend) Bulletin and The Roanoke Times for more than a decade. In 2013, he and his wife moved to Portland, Ore., where he writes freelance and provides public policy analysis. Follow him on Twitter @ctrejbal.

Gabe Ortíz is a San Francisco-based writer. He has contributed to the Mission’s bilingual newspaper “El Tecolote,” and the political blogs AMERICAblog, AMERICAblog Gay, and Veracity Stew. He’s also a Stevie Nicks lover and shameless catlady. Follow him on Twitter: @Tusk81.

Chris Andoe is a New York based writer and seasoned activist. After meeting John Aravosis at a Chicago “StopDrLaura.com” protest in 2000, Chris was inspired to organize his own major demonstrations in St. Louis, his adopted hometown, which drew national attention. Since then, his activism has revolved around LGBT, affordable housing, and mass transit issues. While living in San Francisco, Andoe made headlines taking on the amorphous hacker group Anonymous for publishing nude photos of a Bay Area Rapid Transit spokesperson, saying “Puritanical shame-based tactics have no place in the capital of sexual liberation”, and he extensively covered the city’s jarring gentrification, from mass evictions to the nudity ban. Back in St. Louis Andoe’s hosted public events on the subway and elsewhere as “The Emperor” and writes the Tales from the Emperor column for Vital Voice Magazine. Always in the fray, Andoe’s been interviewed by NPR, CBS, and has been quoted from CNN to The St. Louis Post Dispatch. His upcoming book of short stories, Delusions of Grandeur, is expected out early next year.